This is a stupid complaint but I was bothered by the non vector Linux wallpaper that was set as default. I don't know what else I have to complain about yet. I liked how vector automatically connected to my access point. I like how java and flash were all set up already. I like how ctrl alt delete works like on windows. I like how it recognized my other partitions like windows. So far I like it much more than xubuntu. I think there were more things that I liked but can't remember.

I run FreeBSD on a couple computers, but am frustrated by lack of Flash Player, so I downloaded and installed VL-6.0 Light on a homemade Asus box with P4 and 1Gb ram. My initial thoughts are:

Negative:What I had hoped for was a barebones system, no software installed, so I could add only those packages I want. Since this isn't the case, I'll need to delete a bunch of stuff, some of which I don't even know what it is and couldn't care less.

Positive:The JWM window manager. I have been using it with FreeBSD where I have had to edit .jwmrc to add or remove programs from the menu. Vector's UpdateMenu is a handy addition. I will, however, remove all icons and wallpaper from the desktop. Unlike previous nightmares with CUPS, I was able to get my Brother laser printer running in about two minutes. I really appreciate that my USB card reader and cdrom are automatically mounted and available. I was glad to find gqview available to view my photo collection. Almost forgot Firefox, I upgraded to 3.0, with Flash is running.

First of all, I love VectorLinux. I'm a bit of a noob but I have tried many distros in an attempt to resurrect an old Compaq Presario 1200 notebook, and all the VectorLinux distros definitely seem faster than any others, including other SlackWare distros like ZenWalk and AbsoluteLinux. Whatever black magic you have done to optimize the kernel or whatever, it definitely seems to make this a sleek and speedy distro for older hardware.

My one and only big complaint about VL Light 6 is actually a fairly minor thing to fix: the startup and shutdown sounds (e.g., "Initiating startup sequence"). On the first boot of my new installation it was very loud and annoying. IceWM has these turned on by default, and seems to lack any sort of GUI control panel to change sounds, and although a few forum posts hinted at ways to comment-out lines of the startup and shutdown scripts, it seems like the best thing for you to do is have them disabled by default in the distro, or at least make startup and shutdown sounds an optional selection in the installer menu.

When I did comment them out in the root account, I was later disappointed to hear them again when I logon as a regular user. The scripts must be customized for each account, requiring more annoying commenting-out in each account. So, finally I gave up and simply changed to the JWM window manager, for all accounts. JWM doesn't seem to have annoying sounds configured by default, so that worked for me. Unfortunately it is not as good looking as the sweet IceWM dark grey theme that is the default in VL Light 6. But those sounds were going to drive me crazy.

Thanks for listening to my comment, and thanks for some great and amazing distros!

As outlined in the "Welcome" document, the sounds are found in "~/.icewm/sounds". The easiest way to get rid of them is to just delete them. To prevent their return when creating a new user, delete all wave files in "/etc/skel/.icewm/sounds".

I tried (and still trying) to use this beautiful distro on a Duron 800 MHz, 384 MB RAM DIMM PC133 (4 for video on-board), HDD 15 GB 5400 RPM, and a PCCHIPS M810 mobo, and a 1 GB swap partition.VL is sharing the HDD with an hasefroch XP modified by me to be light some years ago. And it's notorious when i use VL for a while, starts to put heavy, slow. But at any time it's slower than hasefroch.

I supposed VL have to be faster than hasefroch, but i cannot understand why it's slower. And using IceWM (i love this environment).

The applications that i used frecuently are Opera 10.10, Pidgin, Abiword and Evince, nothing more...

I have to congratulate to all VL team by the work made, and the continuous support of all the community of VL users.

Installed on older laptop Dell5000 and it sounds like the hard drive is constantly jumping around. System looks like it goes into super slow motion. Is this older machine capable of working with this? Don't want to giv e up yet 'cause VL6.0 light is it's last chance for usefulness on this planet!

Installed on older laptop Dell5000 and it sounds like the hard drive is constantly jumping around. System looks like it goes into super slow motion. Is this older machine capable of working with this? Don't want to giv e up yet 'cause VL6.0 light is it's last chance for usefulness on this planet!

Got jumping sound from the hard disk? Could it be the hard disk is faulty?

Installed on older laptop Dell5000 and it sounds like the hard drive is constantly jumping around. System looks like it goes into super slow motion. Is this older machine capable of working with this? Don't want to giv e up yet 'cause VL6.0 light is it's last chance for usefulness on this planet!

If it's really running with 32 megs of RAM, that might explain the hard drive thrashing. You don't have enough RAM, so the system is constantly hitting the swap file.

You might try something lighter than VL Light. I used something called BasicLinux several years ago on a computer with 16 megs. It was quite painful. There are distros that run on less RAM than VL6 Light, but I don't know what they are. I'm sure someone here could fill you in on that.--GrannyGeek

Basic Linux works well on computers with 32 MB of RAM; it was what got me started with Linux. I ran Basic Linux 2.1 on a Pentium P1 (100 MHz) for more than two years before I got my present mnachine, and I was able to browse the web using Opera.

The modern version (Basic Linux 3) runs off two floppies, and I've used it to post online when my hard drive failed (using a text browser). It's basically a one man effort (developed by Steven Darnold, with a handful of other people contributing packages). I think it deserves praise.

What else runs in 16 MB? You could try Deli Linux, especially 7.1, which like Basic Linux is based on an early version of Slackware. Or possibly one of the low resource versions of Puppy, such as PULP or Puppy Turbo (or Turbo Extreme).

But really you're better off getting more RAM, especially if you want to browse the Internet.